Refugees on edge: Haitians here legally for seven years could get sent back

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Apr 23, 2017 at 8:18 PMApr 23, 2017 at 10:04 PM

Jennette Barnes @jbarnesnews

NEW BEDFORD — Week after week since late February, Tamarah Jean-Baptiste has waited for the notice she gets every 18 months, to renew her registration as a legal refugee from Haiti. It hasn't come.

The 26-year-old nursing student is afraid of being sent back to a place that no longer feels like home, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, where her education would be derailed and her seven years of American life upended.

On Thursday, her fears seemed to be confirmed, as a report surfaced in USA Today that the federal immigration chief is recommending the United States end temporary protection for some 50,000 Haitians who have been allowed to stay in the United States since the 2010 earthquake.

Their status is set to expire July 22.

James McCament, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a letter that conditions in Haiti have improved enough to end the protection but extend it to January, to allow for a "period of orderly transition," according to USA Today.

The final decision rests with Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who has made no official announcement.

Jean-Baptiste said the lateness of renewal notices, combined with President Trump's position on immigration, sent a ripple of worry through the lives of she and her friends who are refugees.

The Obama administration ended temporary protected status, or TPS, for three other countries — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — effective May 21 of this year.

In Haiti, the earthquake killed an estimated 300,000 people and left some 1.5 million homeless, according the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. A cholera epidemic followed, and cholera surged anew after Haiti was ravaged by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Jean-Baptiste has been in the United States since she was 18, before she graduated from high school. At the time of the earthquake, she and her mother were caring for the preschool-age son of family friends who lived in Florida. The boy was a U.S. citizen, and when Americans came to evacuate him, they told Jean-Baptiste and her mother that one of them could go — but only one.

Her mother insisted it be her. After a heart-rending separation, Jean-Baptiste boarded a plane for Orlando.

They boy returned to his parents. She bounced around between friends and relatives and spent time as a live-in nanny on Long Island, and then landed with relatives in Massachusetts. About two years ago, she found a roommate who had an apartment in a renovated mill in New Bedford.

She spoke limited English when she arrived but now speaks with barely an accent. She wants to be a nurse. She has almost finished her associate degree at Massasoit Community College, and she has been accepted to the training program for licensed practical nurses at Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School.

She was inspired by the compassion of the doctors and nurses who volunteered after the quake.

"I want to have that impact on somebody one day," she said.

In fact, she wants to earn a higher degree in nursing, but because people with TPS cannot get federal financial aid, the cost is too much for now. As it is, Jean-Baptiste has received help from a professor who was a patient a rehabilitation facility where she was working as an aide.

Donna Halper, an associate professor of communication and media at Lesley University, raised money to help pay for her courses at Massasoit, so she could move through the program faster. She said Jean-Baptiste has impressed her with her intelligence and vision.

"This is where her home is, and she's an asset to this country," she said. "The thing I want to stress here is, she's legal. She did all the right things."

Jean-Baptiste acknowledges that she was always aware her status was temporary. TPS provides no path to a green card or citizenship. But based on all the years of renewals, people felt like it would go on forever, she said. They have built lives here. She and the friends she has found who are refugees talk about it all the time.

"For us, this is home," she said.

Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told The Standard-Times the government evaluates the conditions in each country before making a decision. The agency has no further information about what will happen, she said.

Helena DaSilva Hughes, executive director of the Immigrants' Assistance Center in New Bedford, said her advice to refugees is to call their representatives in Congress weekly or monthly to ask for information and help.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey wrote to Kelly on April 18, urging him to extend TPS for Haiti, according to a copy of the letter posted on the website of the American advocacy group Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Markey said more than 55,000 people still live in tent cities with limited food and sanitation.

Moreover, Haitians in the United States send billions of dollars back to Haiti, and ending TPS would hurt the recovery, he said.

For people who get sent back to their home country, adapting is difficult, DaSilva Hughes said.

"You have the sense of feeling like you don't belong anywhere," she said.

Jean-Baptiste said that if she goes back to Haiti, finding a job will be difficult. It will also be hard for her to go to nursing school, because the Haitian system is not set up to take older students who don't come straight from high school, she said.

Rape and murder rates are high, she said. In America, people have peace. They can go to work. In Haiti, "you're never at peace," she said.

Quality of life hasn't really changed since the earthquake, she said, so if the refugees go back now, "What was the purpose of it all?"

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